


gods of blue skies (of this world to comprise)

by Interjection



Series: the road not taken [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dream is a jerk and DreamXD is a jerk too, Enderman Hybrid Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Extortion, Gaslighting, Hybrid Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Physical Abuse, Ranboo has a bad time, Threats of Violence, end portals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28884672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interjection/pseuds/Interjection
Summary: Everything hurt. His back was now throbbing. Ranboo suppressed a sob as he heard the telltale sound of pages flapping wildly in the wind - and then the sound of ripping paper, grating against every bone of his body.Again - no, this couldn’t be happening again, why was this happening again, he was so careful and he hadn’t done anything and surely he had been good this time, hadn’t he?---Based on Tumblr user @quaranmine‘s post “that meme where the FBI shows up at your house because you know too much except it’s DreamXD and Ranboo being the only person who knows what an end portal is,” but I make it angsty.
Series: the road not taken [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203440
Comments: 20
Kudos: 433





	gods of blue skies (of this world to comprise)

“And here’s our table,” Phil said, and Ranboo’s jaw dropped in such standard enderman fashion he would have been ashamed, if he weren’t so preoccupied with the sight in front of him.

Slowly, he took a step forward. Leaned over and traced a finger across the pale, bumpy endstone, its tiny craters and rivers of raised ridges. It had been so long since he felt endstone beneath his skin. 

The empty sockets stare back into him, deep cyans and swirls of black. _You’re here,_ they seem to whisper. _We’ve missed you._

“It’s a cool table, but I think this is a bit of an overreaction,” he heard Techno whisper behind him. “Phil, what do we - uh...”

“Do you - do you know what that is?” Ranboo asked. He struggled to keep the awe from his voice. 

Phil glanced over his shoulders with a bewildered expression. “No?” he said, wings slowly fanning out. “What do you mean?”

“It’s-” Ranboo hesitated, taking a step back. Should he tell them? Should - should anyone in this cursed world have that sort of power? Wouldn’t that lead to more sides, more pointless statuses of power to fight over?

He made a split second decision. 

“Um, nevermind,” he said. “I forgot.”

The lie came so easily. Ranboo internally winced at how familiar his muscles were with the phrase. 

Techno eyes him, pupils narrowing, but he doesn’t comment. Phil gives them both a cheery smile and claps his hands in a neat, smooth motion, effectively shutting down the line of conversation.

“So!” he said. “Anarchy!” 

Ranboo nodded along, tried not to be too weird (or well, weirder than he must already seem to them), and that was that.

* * *

Everything was freezing - his crystalized bed that felt more like ice than wool, his creaking, ramshackle roof with scatterings of icicles that dripped frost and cold, the way every muscle of his body felt like it was contracting into a ball of sharp diamond. 

Ranboo couldn’t complain, though. He had a place to live. He was welcome here, which was so much more than what he deserved after everything he’d done. 

He wasn’t going to freeze to death. Worse case scenario, he takes his blanket and hides _under_ his bed. He’ll be fine. _Fine._

His chattering teeth and rapidly shivering body certainly seemed to disagree with him. 

Ranboo tried to draw in a clattering breath. The winds picked up, slicing every exposed inch of skin with an unforgiving glacier.

 _At least it’s not snowing,_ he thought weakly. 

And then, through the screeching winds and enveloping blindness of night, he heard it. 

There’s something crunching, outside the fences that made up his home. Ranboo blinked slowly, wondering if he’d finally gone off the deep end. If that last tether to sanity which his mind so desperately clung to was finally slipping away, and this was the moment he succumbed to that relentless war of the mind, never to resurface again.

For a terrible, traitorous moment, Ranboo hoped that it was Phil or Techno, here to invite him into their house of warmth, a sign of friendship or at least care, after he’d been invited into their anarchist group (which wasn’t taking sides, they just didn’t want to be ruled, was that so bad?).

“Not much of a house, is it?”

And like an arrow to his heart, that hope was promptly smashed to pieces.

“Shut up” Ranboo gritted out to the figure that was no doubt leering over him with that _stupid_ smily mask and _stupid_ smug voice. “You’re just jealous you don’t even have one.”

His mind scrambled around desperately as he suppressed a terrified scream. Is this his mind again? But that voice doesn’t show up outside the panic room, or does it? What does he know, really? 

Was this actually Dream, here to kill him? To take revenge on for destroying the community house? Ranboo couldn’t bring himself to drag his face away from the swath of blankets that he was clinging to, but he could hear the whine of the fence gates swinging. Something snapping shut in place. 

Dream was definitely here, unless Ranboo had, indeed, well and truly lost it. Which was a likely possibility. 

_Dream_ , what was _Dream_ doing all the way out here? And why _now_ , of all times, did Ranboo decide to finally grow a spine? 

Well, either he was hallucinating big time, or Dream was here to kill him. Either way, it’s not like anything he did will matter. 

“I have a house,” Dream said, sounding mildly affronted. “Now, this pathetic excuse of a cattle pen certainly can’t be called one.”

“Just shut up and kill me already, Dream,” Ranboo yelled. His voice was muffled and thrown about by the wind, but it echoed through his bones nonetheless, and this was _gratifying_ in some horrifying way because either way it’s not like what he’ll say will make any _difference._ “What, are you here to finally gloat over me too? Found a different target than Tommy, huh? Just can’t find a better use of your time than torturing teenagers-”

“What? Woah, I am _not_ Dream,” Dream said, and Ranboo took a moment to process this information. 

“What?”

He finally looks up, squinting through the darkness and the biting way the winds attacked his eyes. 

The person that had his arms cross in front of him looked like a carbon copy of Dream, only with a pale blue hoodie instead of the usual lime green one.

“Just because you’ve put on a different outfit doesn’t mean you’ve changed who you are,” Ranboo snapped through chatters. “Fuck off or kill me, Dream. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“I told you, I’m not Dream,” was the reply. “Check your communicator.”

Ranboo, slowly, drew out the device and glanced at the pale, glowing screen. 

_DreamXD whispers to you: I’m here._

“Really reassuring,” Ranboo said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be one of the nice ones?” ‘DreamXD’ asked. “I thought you had manners, or something like that.”

“Since when have manners ever helped me?” Ranboo bites, suddenly feeling something sullen draw his stomach down. Bitterness clung to every word. “It’s like nothing around here gets done without violence.”

“That’s not my problem.” DreamXD made some shrugging motion, slowly turning his shoulders in an unsteady fashion like he was just getting used to moving his body. “I’m just here to...”

Ranboo flinched as a glimmering stick appeared in DreamXD’s hand. He recognized the telltale sheen of glowing enchantments, but that shouldn't be possible because _you can’t enchant sticks._

Dream, or DreamXD, or Not Dream, whatever the fuck he was - waved his glowing stick above him in what Ranboo assumed was supposed to be a menacing manner. He looked mostly like a deranged serial killer, which was, concerningly, also an apt description for the actual Dream. 

“I need to make an alteration to your book,” he said. “Hand it over.”

Ranboo stared at him for a long, drawn moment. His mind was blank, unresponsive, _why would he want the memory book-_

And then, his memory book was in the other entity’s hands, and Ranboo began yelling again.

“Give it back!” He lunged forward, but DreamXD teleported to the side and slammed his fist down on Ranboo’s back. He hit a faceful of snow and dirt, and a pained whine escaped his throat as the heel of a boot dug into his neck. 

Everything hurt. His back is now throbbing. Ranboo suppressed a sob as he heard the telltale sound of pages flapping wildly in the wind - and then the sound of ripping paper, grating against every bone of his body. 

_Again - no, this couldn’t be happening again, why is this happening again, he was so careful and he hadn’t done anything and surely he had been good this time, hadn’t he?_

His mind only just seemed to process what was happening. His memory book - his memory - was being stolen, torn, violated yet again and this time Ranboo could do nothing but listen and cry into the cold, gritty dirt while his neck is on the verge of snapping and _what did he do?_

He just wanted peace. He just wanted to be loved - not even loved, to just be left alone. To live without constant fear of pain or death or someone destroying everything he held dear. Was that so much to ask for?

 _Yes_ , a part of his mind whispered. _You blew up the community house. You betrayed L’Manberg. You didn’t even have the spine to tell Techno and Phil, your new allies, what the end portal is. They welcome you onto their land and group and you repay them with more hidden secrets? How else will you betray everyone?_

Everything part of him was burning. Ranboo wanted to slice and strip off all his skin, to submerge himself in freezing cold water and close his eyes and not have to worry about any of this anymore and _why did he want all of that so much-_

“There we go,” the voice above him suddenly said, and Ranboo made a choked noise as something hard kicked deep into his side. He tumbled across the floor with a few soft crunches before going limp, body splayed at unnatural angles that twisted knots around all his muscles. His throat felt more parched than desert sands, scraped raw and bloody. 

Something thudded in front of him, and Ranboo somehow had the strength to claw himself over through a filmy, blotched vision and drag his memory book back into his embrace. There were pages missing, ripped from the spine in jagged chunks like an unfinished puzzle shredded apart from frustration.

He choked again as a hand closed around his neck and dragged him up and something sharp and _flaming_ jabbed into his chest. 

A coarse sleeve muffled his wailing scream. 

This pain was worse, so much worse, worse than the wither skulls and being dunked in water and all the stabs and slices he’d ever endured combined, his insides were burning and burning and on fire and covered in lava and Ranboo thought for a few fleeting moment that he would combust into sheer nothingness and he wanted to _forget, forget why am I still here forget everything please I don’t want to be here_ -

“There we go,” the voice, that Dream voice, said, and it sounded so sickeningly like Dream but also not at all, because whereas Dream‘s voice always held a demeaning smugness about him this one had nothing but cold indifference, and Ranboo wasn’t sure which was worse but he couldn’t focus to think anyway because _his entire world was red and white and burning and what the fuck was that stick enchanted with-_

At some point, the pressure stopped. It faded away increments, and all Ranboo could comprehend was that eventually, as his mind flopped away from the shelter of nothingness, he was on the ground again and Dream was above him and everything was horribly, horribly silent. 

_Why_ , he wanted to scream again to the howling winds, but his throat was spent and dead and he couldn’t move or do anything except lie there and spasm erratically like a dying animal with its guts already pooling across the stiff, blue grass.

_W_ _hat did I do why is this happening please I’m so sorry I’m so sorry it’s all my fault please stop I don’t want to die-_

“Let this be a warning,” the voice said in a smooth, terribly indifferent way. “If you write down what happened here, or about that end portal, I assure you that things will get much, much worse. And if you tell anyone, _anyone_ else even a _hint_ of what that portal is-”

Ranboo couldn’t even flinch as something cold pressed against his throat, as much as his mind leaped at the feeling. 

“I guarantee you will never see the light of day again.”

Was this what it had all been about? The portal? That he was being punished for his origins after all, for having the - the _knowledge_ itself? For having the power to utilize it, even if he never would? 

“You really _are_ Dream, aren’t you,” Ranboo rasped. He creaked his neck up to stare blankly into that pearly white mask. Every part of him, from his screaming body to his scattered, twisting thoughts felt weighted with magma, smoldering in its own ruins. 

Dream shrugged, a bit faster this time, and disappeared in a shower of flaking purple particles that drifted around like the snow that had, during some part of all this, began to fall. 

His eyes stung. His entire face was covered in tears, sharp daggers flicking the skin across with every movement. Ranboo couldn’t bring himself to care. He cradled his cold, crumpled memory book to his chest and knew that, as much as he hoped it was, this was not just a nightmare. Not in a world like this.

**Author's Note:**

> why do i always make things angstier than they need to be. 
> 
> ~~Ao3 statistics show that only a small percentage of readers-~~ okay you guys get the idea. No pressure but feedback always welcome!!
> 
> But okay, so my reasoning for this is that DreamXD, as the guardian of the stronghold and the closest thing to a creative mode entity, would take after the most powerful person/the creator/the admin of the world, which would be Dream. Since Dream is in survival mode, and the world always needs some entity with creative mode to run things behind the scenes, it created one that fulfils the function in the way that the original player intended for things to function. So DreamXD technically isn’t Dream, but takes after all of Dream’s characteristics. Welcome to Interjection bullshitting lore as an excuse to write more angst. 
> 
> Link to Tumblr post that inspired this fic: <https://quaranmine.tumblr.com/post/640689085255647232/that-meme-where-the-fbi-shows-up-at-your-house>
> 
> Btw check out my Tumblr: <https://lnterjection.tumblr.com/>
> 
> Yes the pages torn out were the pages that had references to the end portal and the overall meeting with Techno and Phil, plus a few extra ones because why not torture Ranboo further amiright ‘cause canon’s totally lacking on that front.


End file.
